A small group of black farmers organize the Colored Farmers? National Alliance and Cooperative Union in Houston County, Texas. They had been barred from membership in the all-white Southern Farmers? Alliance. Through intensive organizing, along with merging with another black farmers group, the renamed Colored Alliance by 1891 claimed a membership of 1.2 million - 1886
Ratification of a new labor agreement at Titan Tire of Natchez, Miss., ends the longest strike in the history of the U.S. tire industry, which began May 1, 1998, at the company's Des Moines, Iowa, plant - 2001
Twenty-five unions found the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in Columbus, Ohio; Cigarmaker?s union leader Samuel Gompers is elected president. The AFL?s founding document?s preamble reads: ?A struggle is going on in all of the civilized world between oppressors and oppressed of all countries, between capitalist and laborer...? ? 1886